The Truth About the Myths of Columbine (18 Years Later)

On April 20th, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold perpetrated one of the largest mass shootings in American school history. Harris and Klebold, students at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado, turned their firearms on fellow students and faculty alike on a day that would prove to create as much myth as it did reality. Fourteen Columbine students (including the shooters) and one teacher died that day in Littleton. The rippling effects of Columbine can still be felt in American schools today.

Nearly ten years after the shooting Dave Cullen (Columbine) and Jeff Kass (Columbine: A True Crime Story) published revisionist works that corrected the mainstream media myths by using the official FBI reports as well as emails, police affidavits, videotape, appointment books, eyewitness accounts, and the journals of both Harris and Klebold. What we now know is strikingly different from what was reported and repeated by “reputable” news-gathering organizations immediately following the shooting.

According to Greg Toppo, who wrote the USA Today article detailing the publishing of the myths in 2009, “much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong.”

Myths about the Shooting and Shooters at Columbine High School

1) The Columbine massacre was not originally about firearms. Firearms were used as a last resort when the planned bombing fizzled and the situation broke down into a 49-minute shooting. The bombs were set in the cafeteria, which is located directly beneath the library from where many of the myths from that day originated. When the faulty wiring of the bombs did not detonate, Harris and Klebold resorted to guns.

2) Harris and Klebold were not involved in any cowboy duster-wearing cabal of teen angst called the “Trenchcoat Mafia.”

3) Harris and Klebold were not bullied and, in fact, had boasted in journals about picking on both freshmen and “fags.” There are many reasons to be concerned with bullying in schools. However, Columbine is not one of them.

4) Harris and Klebold were not ordinary kids pushed to the brink of psychological madness via bullying. Psychologist Peter Langman, in his book Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, wrote, “These are not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation, These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems.”

5) There was an “enemies list” created by Harris and Klebold, but the enemies had graduated a year before.

6) Harris and Klebold were not on antidepressants, were not Goths, and were not loners. Granted, they did feel like outcasts to certain segments of the high school community, as many kids do, but they did have many friends.

7) Harris and Klebold did not target athletes, minorities, or Christians. The improperly wired bombs were designed to kill everyone, including friends of Harris and Klebold, not targeted groups.

8) Harris and Klebold were not two sides of the same coin, two similar kids, or brothers from different mothers. They were quite different. Describing their starkly contrasting journals, Toppo wrote, “Harris drew swastikas, Klebold drew hearts.” Cullen described Harris has having “a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control,” While Harris once wished he was God so everyone could “OFFICIALLY be lower than me,” Klebold once described himself as a “god of sadness.”

9) There is no evidence that either Harris or Klebold intentionally planned the massacre around Adolf Hitler’s birthday, nor is there evidence that they were inspired in any way by the music of Marilyn Manson.

10) There was a belief that cell phones saved lives inside of Columbine High School. While some students were able to call newscasters, an odd choice of phone calls, many were unable to communicate due to the blaring alarm system that drowned out most of the noise in the school. The sprinkler system flooded the cafeteria and SWAT teams had communications issues due to both the volume of the alarms and the use of strobe lighting in conjunction with the alarms.

The Myth of Cassie Bernall

Maybe the most popular and most repeated story of Columbine was that of Cassie Bernall. The 17-year-old was killed in the library, reportedly after she outwardly affirmed her belief in God. This spiritual affirmation of Christianity became the inspiration for many books, sermons, church groups, and songs (particularly “Cassie” by Flyleaf and Michael W. Smith’s “This Is Your Time”). Some even drew a direct line between the martyrdom of Joan of Arc and the martyrdom of Cassie Bernall.

While Bernall’s story is inspirational, heart-wrenching, and truly touching, FBI reports and eyewitness accounts show that it is also false. Emily Wyant, hiding under the same table as Bernall, reported that Harris said “peek-a-boo” and shot Bernall as she prayed aloud.

As the Bernall martyrdom story became more popularized and canonized in Colorado and around the nation, Wyant kept asking her parents, “But that never happened! Why are they saying that?” She was next to Bernall and had told her story to a variety of outlets from differing perspectives

The truth is that some have also reported a similar confession of faith story about Klebold and Valeen Scnurr, another student in the library. Klebold asked Schnurr if she believed in God after she had already been shot. Schnurr answered “Yes,” and Klebold asked “Why?” He then reloaded, but he did not shoot her again. Schnurr survived.

Schnurr’s story has been unwavering. After investigators had finished interviewing the students that were in the library, they concluded that Schnurr’s conversation with Klebold was the only discussion of God. Many of the investigators doubted that any part of the Bernall myth was based in fact.

Though Wyant had recalled the real story to the Bernalls shortly after the shooting, Misty Bernall, Cassie’s mom, released a curiously titled book about Cassie in 2000. It was entitled She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. It is easy to understand a parental search for value and meaning in such a senseless act that was tragic for so many. Yet, Cassie Bernall was never asked if she believed in God. And Cassie Bernall never said “yes.”

Afraid of potential backlash due to the popularity and the inspirational nature of the Bernall story, the Rocky Mountain News sat on the truth for months and allowed the myth to become more prevalent. Wyant reported telling her story to Bernall’s parents (before publication), as well as authorities, the Rocky Mountain News, and the FBI. The book was still published, still made the bestseller lists, and still landed the Bernalls on Today, 20/20, and Larry King Live.

What are we as a learned society if we keep believing myths are factual because we want to believe in the morals that we learn from them?

The Postscript of Columbine

In the same Greg Toppo USA Today piece that detailed the existence of many Columbine myths, another curious suggestion is made. The journalistic trend is to not just report but to also suggest follow-up actions to a public who high-minded journalistic institutions believe cannot possibly “figure it out.” The online edition of the USA Today suggests in Toppo’s piece that there are “Lessons from Columbine” that should be adhered to immediately by the American populace.

The corresponding piece, co-written by Toppo, describes a Roanoke, Virginia, art teacher who sternly demands a student to “Take your hood off!” It is this sort of attempt to look for any outward sign of discontent that now permeates schools nationwide. What are teachers supposed to do about teen grief, anger, inconsistency of mood, or insecurity in social interaction? Report it, of course. Document it, naturally. Increase the security state, by all means.

Toppo described Roanoke art teacher Benjamin Addison’s new self-realized job description as “focus(ing) on their eyes, looking for small signs of anger or grief, some crumb of unhappiness or aggression left over from the weekend, the night before or the previous school day. (Addison) sees it in their body language too — a shove, a murmured insult. Little things.”

This move toward documenting every citizen’s mood and actions (How many of you do this for them yourselves on Facebook?) for governmental institutions to log, analyze, and control should be nothing less than disturbing. Yet, it is something often seen as necessary and warranted – especially when it is someone else’s child, someone else’s spouse, or someone else altogether. What amount of freedom and trust is lost when Americans – like Cold War East Germans looking for a better ration position within the eyes of the government – “say something” every time they “see something”?

It was Columbine that unleashed a plethora of zero tolerance policies upon American children. It was the overreaction to Columbine that meant that an 11-year-old bringing a plastic knife in his Batman lunch box so that he could eat birthday cake would now be deemed a weapon-wielder. It was the overreaction to Columbine that meant that a menstruating 13-year-old girl with a Midol would now be suspended for possessing drugs at school… or even worse, become a drug dealer for dispensing it to her equally awkward menstruating friend.

The Impossible Prevention

All actions are supposedly being undertaken to “prevent another Columbine,” but is there anything that can really be done to do so, or are school districts assembling boards, focus groups, and studies just to avoid potential legal responsibility if a random act of unpreventable violence occurs within their district? Could “another Columbine” be stopped?

Psychologist Langman wrote, “It is hard to prevent murder when killers do not care if they live or die. It is like trying to stop a suicide bomber.”

When the dust settled and school resumed in Littleton, Colorado, Americans latched onto Columbine to fuel debates ranging from parenting styles to gun control to school culture to the perceived impact of rocker Marilyn Manson. In the words of Barack Obama compadre and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Waste Within the Echo Chamber

The first news conference called reported “25 Dead in Colorado.” The inaccuracies seemed to steamroll from there. In their haste to be first rather than correct, journalists reported rumors as truth, hearsay as evidence, and treated all supposed eyewitnesses as valid. But these practices are not things that occurred “then” and “there.” They occur now and here. Why do we believe a report on the news simply because it’s “on the news”? And why do we believe a rationale just because it keeps getting repeated? Repetition is not truth; truth is truth.

Time is a great healer of the heart as well as the mind. It is also a great equalizer to historical inconsistencies. Today, 18 years later, Columbine is more true than ever. That truth stems from journalists and researchers reading all the reports, talking to all the eyewitnesses, perusing the journals, logging the emails, and challenging every fact that was knee-jerkingly presented on that fateful April day. Now, if we could only remember that the next time we see a “Breaking News” banner flash across the screen…

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Comments

Many of the myths identified are Correctly debunked. However some are far more questionable. The general view now is as this article states is that Eric and Dylan were completely disparate people who as it were came to columbine for entirely different reasons. Whilst Of course these boys were not twins, I believe there are solid arguments against this view which I will outline. I feel that something Sue Kelbold was told in her endeavours to understand Dylan sums up the current view. Eric being a psychopath with murderous intent (homicidal) was driven to kill and didn’t care if he died in the process. Dylan being a depressive with a deep desire to die( suicidal) was driven to die and didn’t care if others died in the process even if presumably this meant he himself did some of the killing. Now these arguments are actually to my mind fairly outrageous to be honest. There is of course no doubt that Dylan wanted to die but to relegate his participation in a massacre to an almost bystander role, who just happened to take delight in killing people,stretches credulity in my opinion. Dylan unleashed a huge amount of anger as well as pleasure during the attack. And was he more merciful than Eric? Yes Dylan allowed a common friend of he and Eric’s to leave the library, but Eric initiated the exchange of dialogue which made this possible. Likewise to suggest that Eric merely wanted to kill whilst then killing himself as almost an incidental action, is again frankly rediclous. One the one hand we are told that Eric believed himself to be worth far more to all those inferiors around him to then be told he killed himself because what that now he could die happy? It is clear as day that both these boys were homicidal and suicidal and that the attack was a joint venture to bring about both their own and many other people’s death. Yes Eric may have been the dominant party, yes he may have encouraged Dylan to take part but Dylan concealed and cooperated with the attack right down to its grim conclusion. He could have killed himself in any number of ways which didn’t involve killing others and he wasn’t that out of touch with reality because he attended the school prom o my three days before the attack. He hid it and no one even knew he was depressed. Yet A central argument to support the view that both boys were radically different is that Dylan is seen as being very depressed and mentally ill, losing touch with reality and enveloping delusional thinking e f he was ‘godlike’. Eric on the other hand is seen as ‘disturbed’ but basically a born psychopath who is narcissistic and sadistic. He’s akin to a ted bundy. Really? Well did ted bundy commit suicide? Did he set out to die? No. There may be some overlaps with someone like bundy but there are
Just as many with Dylan and for me Eric’s death by his own hand places him in a fundamentally different place
From a sadistic serial killer. Eric like Dylan was depressed. Now it’s true that the symptoms manifested itself quite differently from
Dylan though again there were some commonaites. Whereas Dylan often felt lost and terrible inside, Eric’s depression led to intense feelings of irritability and rage. Eric was bothered by every little thing. People bothered him all the time for the most trivial of reasons. This wasn’t because he was arrogant psychopath but due to dysfunctional anger and rage caused by depression. Serious depression. Eric in a sense was much less connected to his depression than was Dylan who at least knew he was sad (god of sadness) Eric prevented this from happening by utilising all his feelings toward hate (full of hate and I love it). These two very different expressions do not change the fact that they were both expressions of depression however. But there were commonalities often overlooked. Dylan is seen as delusional whereas Eric is not? Really? Eric believed that columbine would kick start a revolution, he thought he was some sort of God whose actions would usher in some sort of Armageddon based on ‘natural selection’.
Of course it didn’t. Both Eric and Dylan had delusions of grandeur and both exhibted narcissism, Dylan may have been sad but he was still a god.
Both boys believed and encouraged one another to believe they had evolved to a higher plane of existence,
They merely expressed this differently when writing about it.
Dylan was a God who was in huma form whereas Eric was ‘sooooo different’ from all of us. But both are saying the same thing essentially.
That they had the right to kill.
They would have discussed this, as they would have discussed the attack itself. Their delusions stemmed I believe from feeling odd and alien to others, yes from being bullied to being excluded, invalidated or simply ignored. Yes they had a group of friends but these were like themselves and Eric and Dylan hated people who either looked or were like then because they hated themselves which they bitterly resented because they believed it was society which was at the root of their self hate. Both boys compensated for their self hate through their increasingly cult like relationship whereby they became above the rest of us and narcissistic. Both boys believed that humanity was immoral and that rules,
Society, civilisation itself was merely a facade which camouflaged this. This view itself which is very bleak was a symptom of their depressed state.

Most suicidal people are not homicidal because they blame themselves for how they feel and believe that everyone else is better off without them. However a small group of suicidal people, like Eric and Dylan, blame other people for their desire to die. That is why they feel vengeful and indeed homicidal. They also feel that they are justified in their actions because they have they believe been made to feel so bad about themselves by others whether deliberately or by default As Dylan said “OUR mini judgement day”.

What is also Striking about the two boys as a disparate duo with completely separate reasons for attacking the school, albeit in unison, is that both boys difficulties are divorced completely from their social environment. Indeed this is the only way that a basis of this argument can be made. Because If both boys were reacting to things they were actually experiencing in their lives, especially if these were similar, this at once means that the boys had common ground. This would then mean that the ‘disparate duo’ theory would be fundamentally weakened. So Dylan was deluded, depressed and suidical whereas Eric was narcissistic, anti social and sadistic. One wanted to die and the other to kill. None off this was due to any experiences they had or the result of trauma due to them.
Presumably then these problems with their personalities where Simply an accident of birth? Interestingly peter Langman, clinical psychologist who classes Eric as a born pyschopath and says Eric suffered no traumatic experiences does nonetheless explore various themes which could have motivated Eric toward the attack. Eric was a compensatory narcissist for feeling inferior which had stemmed from his slight chest deformity and lack of success with girls. This he says made Eric search for a masculine Identity expressed ultimately through extreme violence. He doesn’t however place much credence on bullying or Eric’s sense of being the constant newcomer due to moving around a lot, for reasons I simply cannot understand. So Eric could apparently be affected by feeling deformed and sexually inadequate but not really by bullying or by feeling like he always had to start at the bottom of the social ladder? I would suggest he was and very much so in fact. I mean why wouldn’t he be? Oh that’s right psychopaths aren’t affected by being bullied or low down on the social ladder? So why was he affected by the other things but not those? Oh that’s right A psychopath just says he is so he can use it as an excuse to murder people. Likewise Dylan in his description of being surrounded by ‘zombies’ who nonetheless held a lot of power over him, who had lives,
(he felt) who didn’t accept him or belittled him, or whom he saw get away with things, all of that was just part of his delusional imagination? When Eric and Dylan were surrounded in the commons and covered in ketchup and humiliated whilst teachers looked and and did nothing, was that a delusion? If Eric felt angry enough to kill for such things happening was that because he was a psychopath? Or because he was a depressed adolescent who had good reason to be depressed. Depression turned outward is anger and anger is a precursor for hatred.
What if both boys respective disorders were not accidents of birth but outgrowths of actual experiences? Perhaps experiences we know nothing about either at school or elsewhere? Perhaps due to experiences we do know about? Now it’s probably true that a lot of their difficulties were exacerbated by their being so close, they dwelled on and built on their homcidal anger and increasingly isolated themselves. Eric said as much. They took on an entirely negative view of humanity and ultimately of life itself. But they were adolescents with their Brains rewiring in a very unhealthy manner. Their narcissism came from a very bad place, a sense of being different and of being alien. That wasn’t as much about them being outcasts, so much as it was about their feeling disconnected, uninvolved, unrecognised, disrespected, unloved, not sought after, uncelebrated, and unacknowledged. Their friends were not their friends by choice so much as by default, no one else,least of all those who were in the limelight wanted them. Feelings of envy and rejection were paramount. For both of them.
They said so.

I think Sue klebolds book is good and and honest. However she says that Eric was on the path to violence as early as 1997 and that he believed Dylan was too but that “Dylan’s Journal tells a different story”. Sue said that Dylan suddenly became homicidal as well as suicidial in early 1999. It’s certainly true that Dylan often spoke about suicide and feeling like he wanted to die in his journals and unlike Eric seldom spoke of killing etc. However I’m sure he did mention going on a shooting spree even before Eric had began his journal and mentioned doing this with another person. This was well before 1999. This shows two things,
Dylan had already had Had homicidal thoughts involving mass murder and had did so independent of his relationship with Eric.

Another issue with the disparate duo theory is that it’s allows for influence only one way, namely Eric to Dylan. Despite the theory suggesting that the boys were in reality poles apart, this didn’t prevent Dylan, who really just wanted to die apparently, taking part in mass murder. Now the question I have is this, why? Why was Dylan so influenced by Eric that he would do this? He may have been sad
and Suicidal, but does this explain his decision to take part in murder. Of course Eric did influence Dylan but not in the way that is now being depicted, I e that Dylan just did this out of loyalty to Eric. Rather it was that Eric, being an externaliser of emotion provided Dylan with a model of what to do with his own depression, I e externalise it. However Eric did not create in Dylan either his depression or his anger, that all came from Dylan’s experiences and his interpretation of these. I believe that the boys influenced one another so how May Dylan have influenced Eric? Eric has often been called the philosopher of the attack but I believe it to be the reverse. Eric was the main planner and enactor but The ‘philosopher’ was Dylan, in so far as it was he who influenced Eric into the whole ‘evolved’ ‘ into a higher consciousness thing. Dylan really believed that to be the case and his godlike identity was not a source of sadness but a counterpoint against his sadness. Eric would have seized on this of course and added his own brand to it. just as Dylan seized on the Externalisation of his depression. Put these things together, and u get two very angry people with a belief that they had evolved beyond the rest of us.

As with so many aspects of Dave Cullen’s narrative on columbine, things which are peripheral are made central. As part of the disparate duo theory Dave Cullen says Dylan had bright future (because he eventually agreed to visit a university with his parents, well actually they had to press him into that as Sue KLebold says he was burned out with academia) . Clearly Dylan did not have a bright future.. And what’s more he knew it. How can Cullen even say that? Even leaving aside columbine and Eric, Dylan was suicidal! Was that Eric’s doing as well? However in terms of the attack, we hear again that It was just Eric and not Dylan who was homicidal. He was he one who was making no plans for the future (despite convincing evidence that he tried unsuccessfully to join the marines) whereas Dylan wasn’t really involved in the plan for the attack, either pratically or psychologically. This is just not borne out, Dylan was well aware that columbine was coming and that he was going to be there participating. He was looking forward to it. Is it really feasible to suggest that someone who was suidical would nonetheless kill other people who had done them no harm in an objective sense, just out of loyalty or to impress Eric Harris? Of course there are elements of that present but in the end Dylan was tbere because he wanted to be there, for his very own reasons and motivation. Yes without his cult like relationship with Eric this avenue of self and other destruction would not have been facilitated, but that doesn’t mean that somehow that Dylan was there by some sort of accident. And certainly not just to commit suicide.

Peter Langman who has written about both boys has referred to Eric’s writings on numerous occasions to highlight Eric’s narcissism and sadism as well as prominent anti social features. Whereas low self esteem is seen as central to Dylan, dr Langman places Eric’s difficulties with low self esteem in a very marginal position. It’s almost as if he uses a scoring system for example referring to Eric’s expressions of narcissism as out numbering his references to low self esteem by far, thus concluding that low self esteem was not a lot to do with Eric’s problems. Yet he also describes Eric as a ‘compensatory narcissist’ which at its heart is narcissism created from low self esteem. So which is it? Can someone have both high and low self esteem? My view is this, Eric’s narcissism was nothing whatsoever to do with genuine self esteem, rather is was an outgrowth of very low self
Esteem. However Eric did ‘fall in love’ with his narcissistic image, he actually came to believe in it. More so than Dylan who never abandoned his true feelings about himself despite his delusions. So for all of dylans so called psychosis and Eric’s so called narcissism, it is Dylan who was more realistic. It’s no coincidence however that the more narcissictic the ‘God of sadness’ became the more homicidal he became, because just as anger is depression externalised so homicidality is suicidality externalised. People speak of Eric’s path to violence but then contradict themselves by saying there was no path, it was just because he was a born psychopath, sadist, malignant narcissist, choose whatever label you see fit. But he was on a path and Dylan went along the same one, just not to the same extent,
though far enough. The path was low self esteem, depression/suidical to anger, narcissism to being homicidal. Now it’s not that they became one at the expense of the other, they remained both. So the path was really a circular one, whereby they became of all hose things. Eric probably seldom felt depressed/sad because he had embraced rage and anger as a way to mitigate those feelings which he hated in himself, but that didn’t change his end desire for death. Dylan never completely left his sadness behind, he still felt it probably all the time to an extent though he too increasingly used anger and rage to mitigate these and make himself feel powerful.

Both Eric and Dylan had experience of being bullied but yes probably bullied others. They were what’s known as ‘bully victims, it’s not uncommon for people who feel low down/ bullied to pick on those few who they might feel are more vulnerable than them. Eric and Dylan were bullied,
particularly Eric, as outlined by brooks brown. Also Time and again we hear that because the boys targeted the whole school and not just those who may have bullied them, this proves that bullying played no part. In fact few school shooters target specific people, nor do other spree shooters. Rather they target an institution and what it has come to represent to them, and everyone is a ‘legitimate’ target in their mind. The fact that Eric and Dylan tried to blow up the school does show an escalation in method but it does not mean their motive was any different from other spree killers.